My Small Girlfriend, Curli-Su. We kind of rescued each other when she was a month old--her from a gang of abusive children (I grabbed my quarterstaff and went medieval on them), and me from the months following my 'psychiatric episode' (when I was spending most of my time wandering in the woods, searching for the remnants of my being). She was the first living thing I'd connected with since I left Nova Roma. Not bad for a palm-sized pup.

She just turned six years old. She's still smaller than a laptop case, but only a little. She's tidy and rather catlike; she loves to climb and sits in the window all day. She barks when I need her to and not otherwise; she bats things around with her grabby little paws; she likes cats, dislikes other dogs, and feels relentlessly responsible for me. And we're going to Austin in April, for the Feriae Latinae gathering; now that I've got a car and my life back, it's time she learned how to be a Road Warrior! >({|;-)

This is the last photo of my cat yesterday morning. We had let to put her out of her misery last night. She was 18 years old. She was a cheerful cat, never grumpy. In her youth she liked to play table tennis and was really good in catching the ball.

Aieee...that is sad. I too have known the company of a wonderful, wonderful cat (and her name wasn't Felix). A black-and-white "tuxedo cat" like yours (or what she looks like from that angle). Sam-cat was a great car-traveller, and in her time with me she lived amicably with two dogs, a rat, a mouse and a parrot. She liked to sit by the poolside at my apartment complex just to people-watch. She could catch birds the size of pigeons. She liked to go out fighting on Friday and Saturday nights; she was a spayed female, so it wasn't the mating thing; she just liked the adventure. If she seemed to be getting the worst of it, she'd come running back to the house, knowing that Combat Poodle Pepper and Rudi the Greyhound would provide backup. On our dog-walks, she followed so close behind us that from a distance people thought she was on a leash too! And she only ever scratched me once, totally by accident. She would only sharpen her claws on tree-bark; and she would rather have done a face-plant than use them even to hold onto me to keep from falling.

I've missed her hard...and my other three dogs, the last one dying of a stroke a couple of days before Christmas of 2005; and the rat, and the parrot (whom we discovered had been wild-caught, so we rehabbed and released him in Venezuela)... So many griefs. But shortly after Pepper's death, I found a verse that put it perfectly; it's from Kahlil Gibran:

"When you are sorrowful, look again in your heartAnd you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."

I have known much pleasure and much delight in the company of my pets. We've had capital-A Adventures; Pepper served with me during Desert Shield/Desert Storm (we were Stateside, fixing airplanes when they came home on rotation). I have been extraordinarily blessed.

Salvete,here are my cats Hod and Vidra watching out of my bedroom window from the loft. Their names mean beaver and otter in Hungarian, because they used to love water as kittens. Hod is the one with the white spot under her chin.Unfortunately Vidra died last year, at the age of 8, of cancer.Now I have a new cat I rescued from the courtyard, but she's still too wild to take photos of. It took me two years of feeding her before I was able to catch her, and by that time she was very ill and needed quite a lot of care. Now she's perfectly recovered, though. Hod isn't very friendly to her, but at least she's not bored to death like when she was alone.

Valete,Livia

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Hic "Einstein" primus erat canium. It was 1995. There was this little, sleek, Pomeranian-mix puppy wandering loose in traffic. Our next door neighbor-lady picked him up, then thrust him upon us. We all wanted a dog, so we adopted him. As you can see, he's getting a bit gray (like me) as the years go on.

Fast forward five years. My eldest was walking home from school, himself a lover of dogs, and this raggedy, fairly dirty, homeless white-yellow terrier (or whatever) was standing across the street. They looked at each other. And that was it; the dog would not leave him. We waited for her to see if she wandered off again, then we got to know her, adopted her and named her "Lady" -- although in fact she looks much more like "Tramp".

Where Einstein was a nervous, loves-everybody-dog, Lady turned out to be strictly a one-man dog; Alex was her "mate", as she saw it, and no one had better come between them without passing inspection. We all got a nip before (after 5 or 6 years) she mellowed out some. Einstein had a bit of an identity and displacement crisis when she arrived, but he adjusted with sufficient compensatory attention from us.

Lady was tough, quiet, immovable (yes, I've tripped over her) and a hunter, mostly the occasional bird, but we were always pulling her avid self off of any furniture close to the turtle tank -- oh, she was hungry for those turtles.

Which brings us to 2007. My wife is taking the two dogs for a walk, and has been for some time thinking of getting a large dog -- she wants a watchdog. And then this big golden retriever puppy comes bounding along the street, saying hello to everyone available. One woman has her door open and he just invites himself in.
Back home, my wife tells Alex about the dog. He goes back to the court where the dog was seen. And -- once again -- the dog won't leave Alex. Fait accompli, we now have a large golden retriever pup. WOOF-WOOF! Oh yes, a bit noisy, and somewhat unpopular with the little older dogs, but they get along well enough.

On May the 5th died also our other cat Felix at the age of about 10 years. About 8 years ago we saw him sometimes in our garden. He was probably an abandoned cat because he was getting thinner and thinner and he was very afraid of humans, but Kitty liked to play with him. Over months we introduced him to us and our house, but even after years he got panic, when somebody bent over him. Still he needed his daily hours of share of affection.